Hands up anyone who is surprised to find out that '123456' is the worst password of 2014. The list was compiled by SplashData from a collection of files dumped after accounts were hacked. Hot on the heels of '123456' is 'password'. Sony, you may remember, was recently hacked and made the hacker's job easier by keeping thousands of internal passwords in a folder called passwords. Whether or not that folder had 'password' as the password is unclear.
Other favourites included variations on the '123 …' theme, along with those old chestnuts 'letmein', 'qwerty' and 'trustno1'.
We're all guilty of not using strong enough passwords; in some instances, it doesn't matter. But when we use the same passwords across different applications, we can come unstuck.
My favourite password story relates to a visit, many years ago, to a satellite builder in North America. The company president took us on a tour of the facility and wanted to enter an area restricted by a keypad on the door. He didn't know the code, so asked a passing engineer. The engineer looked on the wall next to the door, where there was a list of days and codes.
